


Downtime

by Anonymous_Creator



Category: Critical Role (Web Series) RPF
Genre: California, Current Events, F/M, Fire, Friends With Benefits, Sleepy Cuddles, Stress Relief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 13:26:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16577366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymous_Creator/pseuds/Anonymous_Creator
Summary: Taliesin needs to get his head together before his Talks Machina interview. The Creative Director is well aware he needs a friend and invites herself over to check on him.





	Downtime

**Author's Note:**

> The first rule of shipping real life humans is -- don't ship the real life humans. Especially don't ship them anywhere they can SEE it. And for the good grace of green apples don't mention it in places outside of this. This is weird. You're here too, welcome to my weird, weirdling. Enjoy it, but let's respect the real life humans and keep it on the down low.
> 
> I also appreciate comments, all that being said. If you're feeling brave.

Taliesin sat in his bath tub in his shared house and hoped no one would come home unexpected.

It wasn’t that he was hogging the space. There were two bathrooms in the home and that made it at least feasible for several adults to cohabitate. It wasn’t a fear of being seen as selfish that made him loath the thought of company.

Taliesin gently lowered himself on the side of the tub, naked, and let his body heat leach into the cool surface of the tub. A few times he swallowed back a sniffle that threatened to become something much, much larger. Something that demanded to be released and faced.

Taliesin didn’t have the strength, or the time, or the inclination.

He laid in the tub, breathed gentle thoughts, and the warmth disappeared from his form. Taliesin imagined it was the anxiety of the world that was leeched away instead.

After a time he reached up and turned on the warm water and allowed it to gradually fill the room with humid, heavy air. 

The world was burning down around them. Dante’s Inferno made real -- the Destroyer of Worlds devouring the planet one mile at a time. Places he knew, gone. And he got to turn on water at a tap. Water flowed over him and he couldn’t any more. He just couldn’t.

He sobbed, as quietly as he could manage, but the pain was there. The raw, horrible gnawing sensation in his gut. The fear that this time he would never get back to something close to normal. How in the world did his stupid problems with constantly hitting near death in a game, a fucking game, or his last VO gig, or the car needing a new battery -- how do you reconcile that you, for no damn reason, get those kind of concerns, and other people fucking burned to death. If they were lucky their last thoughts were gasping for air from smoke inhalation before the fire reached them.

There was a knock on the door. Taliesin immediately muffled himself by biting his hand and cursed silently in his head. God’s be damned. No. Just. Please. No.

“Hey,” a familiar voice called out. “I’ll be in the bedroom, when you’re ready to talk.”

Taliesin let out a pained bark of surprised laughter and shook the hand he had bit. He’d probably have a small bruise. For a few moments he gripped the side of the tub and rocked back and forth.

Fuck it. Might as well be clean.

A few minutes later he had managed the essentials of a shower and wrapped a towel around himself before heading to his room. He opened the door and shook his head.

“Really? You came all the way out here on a Tuesday?”

“It’s not my interview night,” Marisha said with a lazy grin. She lounged on his bed, bare foot. She sat her phone on his night stand as he walked to the Tardis painted closet.

“Oh sure, yeah, not like the Creative Director doesn’t have a hundred other things to be doing on a Tuesday,” Taliesin said as he opened a closet door to provide a bit of privacy as he dressed.

“I know where I need to be,” Marisha said. Her tone brokered no argument.

Taliesin felt touched and yet acutely embarrassed. “I’m fine, you know. I’ll be there on time.”

Marisha’s hand wrapped around him and drew him into a hug. Taliesin allowed himself to be turned away from choosing a shirt and simply leaned his head on her shoulder and stood with her.

She was always a solid rock in the group. The strongest. The fighter.Taliesin could fit in that role, and had for a time, but it suited Marisha better. 

Lately he felt more like the tired soldier who desperately needed a quieter, simpler life. Yet the world called to him to right wrongs, fight good fights, try and fit the internal mold of what it meant to be a good person.

Why did that have to be so damn exhausting?

“Because,” Marisha said, after Taliesin managed to mutter a bit of his thoughts out loud, “We’re not meant to do it alone. And we’re not meant to take on all of it. Hell, even 200 years ago most of humanity didn’t have the option to know about all of it, the moment it was happening. We’re not designed for this shit!” She finished her little declaration with a defiant and prissy tone that caused him to smile.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said softly, “Tribes of 70 or so, not really meant to even know the face of more than that and know who they are.”

“Hindbrain overload,” Marisha said as she began to place little kisses along the line from his temple down to the nape of his neck.

“Well,” Taliesin said with a pleasant growl in his voice, although he wasn’t sure the rest of him had signed on to the adventure.“I have an idea of what kind of overload you were planning on.”

Marisha stopped and her hand rested on his hips, completely still. She caught his eyes for the first time since they had spoken. “Hey. Only when we want. If we want. For no other reason than it pleases us. Right?”

Taliesin managed a warm smile and gave her a soft, pliant kiss. “You are endlessly pleasing, my dear. I think today what pleases me most is my good friend Marisha.”

She quirked her head while she thought a moment. A quiet shrug was enough reply for both of them as she pulled Taliesin onto the bed and wrapped them in a blanket.

It was warm. The room, dimly lit, let him imagine a cozy den in a cave. Her hair carried a light scent of something floral and fruity and feminine. He breathed the gentle smell of her as he cuddled against her back.

To his surprise he dozed off for a few minutes and startled awake when Marisha snored near his ear. He tried to shift into a different position without waking her but it was no use. They both tossed about and settled onto the bed, only a foot intertwined.

He woke up to his alarm telling him it was time to start heading to the studio. He clunked the thing off with undo force and blinked away his muzzy, sleep filled brain.

Marisha sat on the edge of his bed and fussed with her tall military boots. Memory flooded back to him and he smiled at her.

“Well, it’s not too often you can say we ‘slept together’,” he said with exaggerated finger quotations.

“You’re not too bad of a bed partner. Assuming you don’t steal the sheets,” she said.

“Log saw,” he said as he barely lobbed a pillow her direction.

“Icicle toes.” Marisha grinned and threw the pillow back.

He hastily grabbed a t-shirt, over coat, and a mismatched pair of socks from the closet before hopping his way down the hall as he finished dressing.

“Do we have time for a coffee and tea run?” he asked as they moved towards the front door.

“Oh, so now I’m driving?” She dug through her satchel for her keys.

He took the extra moment to slip into his shoes in the foyer. Finally, completely dressed, Taliesin batted his lashes at her.

“Fine,” Marisha said, “By caffiene alone --“

He interrupted to finish her words --“Do I set my mind in motion.”

The linked fingers for a few moments as they walked to her car. It was a shitty day, the sky was a strange, bleary color and they’d be running the a/c on internal the whole trip. And there was coffee, and cuddles, and care.

He’d fight a few more dragons to defend coffee, cuddles and care.


End file.
